There are a lot of poor and buggy implementations of Lightning. That doesnāt mean the concept itself is a failure, but the process of getting to something that works for the most people in a decentralized way has been messy.
Discussion
Agreed, self-custody Lightning has improved, but it's still nowhere near where it needs to be to be easy for a newcomer.
Iāll give just one example of many:
Yesterday I met someone who still had around 50,000 sats stuck in BlueWallet after their public node shut down over a year ago. There was effectively no communication other than a single blog post about it. Heās one of an untold number of people who had no idea why he couldnāt access his balance and it made him think that Lightning itself was completely broken.
Yeah, but my only point is that when technical people tell me they can't get Lightning to work, they lose me, because I am not technical and can. Trust me, I have tested so many Lightning wallets and have had force closes, etc. I am well aware of the shortcomings and frustrations, but to say it doesn't work is false, and to say you can't get it to work is hard to believe. It's more like you have another vision of what you want Bitcoin to do, and you refuse to even put in the time to understand or use the other thing.
Yes, the early bitcoiners split into different camps and each one has an agenda or a narrative that they uphold. We are never going back to the big block hard fork and on-chain-only scaling, but layer 2 has become too dependent on centralized infrastructure. I donāt know what the solution for that is.
Fair, I agree that aspects of layer 2 have centralized more than we all would like. I also do not know the solution. I'll continue to run my lightning node to do my small part š
i dont believe the concept is a failure at all, im not siding with those who claim its useless, im simply not going to pretend that people don't have problems with it cause that is a quick way to lose everyone who does to alternatives.
Yes, Iām a big advocate for Lightning but the self custody aspect is not easy for most people to manage.
